Fatigued Care-Giver…
There’s a lot of talk about burn out, secondary stress, and vicarious trauma… I have spoken and written about it a lot myself. Burn-out, secondary stress and vicarious trauma are occupational hazards of working with traumatized people, as aid workers and social workers do, myself included. They are the direct result of the work we do. Listening to people who have been harmed can be damaging. When it is, these occupational hazards creep into our everyday lives and make us miserable. They can cause relationship strain, nightmares, increased drug and alcohol use, decreased sense of purpose and an overall decreased sense of joy in life. To avoid these hazards, we work on building boundaries and practicing good self-care and maintaining balance. These skills help us to keep our lives separate from the lives we support through our work, and keep us safe from these occupational hazards.
Boundaries are the fence between what’s in my control and what’s outside of my control. So, with strong boundaries and good self-care, we know how to keep the pain that others experience from hurting us. But what about the reverse? We’re not just bi-standers in other people’s lives, we have our own lives, and sometimes life causes emotional distress. In my work, there’s a lot of talk about emotional triggers, these are moments when someone else’s experience triggers a memory of a similar experience we’ve had. Sometimes these experiences can be positive. For example, having experienced my own burn-out and vicarious trauma I am very good at identifying those feelings in others. And sometimes they can be negative, as would be the case if every time I saw someone struggling with vicarious trauma I found myself feeling traumatized (thankfully I don’t!).
What we don’t talk about that often is just the general emotional exhaustion. How do we support ourselves and continue to do our work when we are overwhelmed? Theoretically, it’s the same. Find our own support system, take care of our emotional and physical health needs, take care of ourselves. But there is one critical difference, the boundary is different.
When my friends or family are the ones hurting, my way of helping and supporting them is different from what I do when I work with a client. There’s no professional boundary to allow me to put those worries aside at the end of the day. So, my worries for them don’t really end. And when it’s me going through a tough time, either because of things that are happening to people I love or things that are happening to me, I still need to create the boundary. Boundaries are not just there to help care-givers, they are there to help the people we work with. At their foundation, they create an understanding of expectations, a level of consistency and baseline for trust. Beyond that, when I’m having a difficult time, good professional boundaries mean that the quality of the services I provide to someone else is not compromised.
So, I know how to do my work when I’m emotionally overwhelmed. But, what about the other side of that work-life balance? How do I apply the concept of boundaries to my personal life, so that I can decrease that feeling of being emotionally overwhelmed? I think, for me, it goes back to the idea of what’s in my control and what’s outside of it? I can make sure the people I care about know that I’m there for them and I can ask those same people to be supportive of me when I need it. I can decide to practice mindfulness and meditation instead of worrying about what’s outside of my control, no matter how much I care about the outcome. And I can make sure I prioritize myself sometimes, and exercise and eat right. Or each chocolate, and take a nap, whatever the situation calls for! And I can take a break from writing that grant, and go outside.
